Participant Info

First Name
Emily
Last Name
Hawk
Country
United States
State
NY New York
Affiliation
Columbia University
Website URL
https://www.emilyhawk.org/
Keywords
Dance, modern dance, Black dance, ballet, United states, choreography, intellectual history, 1960s, 1970s, postwar period, New York City, urban history, U.S. presidents, performance, performing arts
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
other credentials

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Emily Hawk is a twentieth century United States cultural historian and final-year Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. Her current research, “Movements of Modern Dance: Choreography, Education, and Discourse in the Black Arts Era,” examines how a cohort of Black choreographers intervened in discourse on race, cultural identity, and civic engagement by performing beyond conventional theatrical settings and engaging diverse national audiences.

Hawk’s research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian Institution, the Rockefeller Archives, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, New York State Archives, Emory University, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. It has also earned accolades from the Dance Studies Association (Selma Jeanne Cohen Award), Popular Cultural Association (William M. Jones Award), and Western Association of Women Historians (Perry Graduate Poster Prize).

Hawk’s first publication is “The Choreographer as Intellectual: Alvin Ailey’s Ideas about Black Modern Dance” in the Journal of American Culture. Her next article on New York City’s Dancemobile program is forthcoming in the Journal of Urban History. She is a contributor to the blogs of the Gotham Center for New York City History and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History and has written book reviews for The Nation and History Today. She is an organizer for the upcoming Dance, History & the Social Sciences Conference, to be hosted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia.

Hawk is committed to teaching and student mentorship, grounded by a love for the liberal arts. A 2021 finalist for Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching and a Faculty Diversity Fellow, Hawk participates in Columbia’s Teaching Development Program. She serves as an advisor to rural college applicants through the Fair Opportunity Project (2022-present) and is a former undergraduate academic advisor through Columbia’s Center for American Studies (2019-2022).

Prior to Columbia, Hawk earned an M.A. with distinction in dance history at the University of Roehampton and a B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, in dance and history from Franklin & Marshall College.

Recent Publications

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/martha-graham-dance-biography/

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/body-machine

Novel Ideas: Black Intellectual History and The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/stages-streets-and-screens-the-geography-of-nyc-dance-in-the-1960s-1970s-dance-boom-1

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century
Expertise by Topic
American Presidents, Higher Ed, Race, Urban History